Family Foundations

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The Council on Foundations defines a family foundation as one whose funds are derived from members of a single family, though this is not a legal term and has no precise definition. The Council on Foundations suggests that family foundations have at least one family member serving as an officer or board member of the foundation and, as the donor, that individual (or a relative) must play a significant role in governing and/or managing the foundation. Most family foundations are run by family members who serve as trustees or directors on a voluntary basis. In many cases, second- and third-generation descendants of the original donors manage the foundation.

Family foundations make up over half of all private (family, corporate, independent, and operating) foundations, or 40,456 out of approximately 73,764 foundations (Foundation Center, 2011). Family foundations make up approximately one-third of the Council’s membership.

Family foundations range in asset size from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 billion. The holdings of family foundations total approximately $294 billion, or about 44 percent of all foundation holdings of $662 billion. Despite this, three out of five family foundations hold assets of less than $1 million. Family foundations gave away approximately $21.3 billion in grants in 2011 (The Foundation Center, 2011).

Below is everything on our site for family foundations. You can use the filtering options on the right to narrow these results.

This legislation includes several important provisions that will help charitable and philanthropic organizations serving communities in every Congressional District across the country. Specifically, H.R. 644 would permanently enact three temporary and currently expired giving incentives – the IRA charitable rollover and enhanced incentives for the donations of food inventory and land conservation easements. The measure also simplifies the excise tax rate on private foundation investment income.

The Council on Foundations offices will be closed from December 25, 2014 - January 2, 2015. During this time, Council staff is available to assist our members with their time-sensitive needs. Please call our main number at 703-879-0600 and select "Membership" or e-mail us at membership@cof.org.

This afternoon, the United States House of Representatives failed to advance the Supporting America's Charities Act (H.R. 5806), a milestone bill that would have widely benefited philanthropy and charitable organizations across the country. The vote broke down along party lines, with 275 Members voting for the bill and 149 Democrats voting "no" on the grounds that the provisions are not offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

Joining Forces Impact Pledge organizers announced five new pledges to the Philanthropy Joining Forces Impact Pledge at an event at Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum last week. With the new commitments, a total of 35 participants have pledged more than $200 million over the next five years to support veterans and their families as they transition back into civilian life. The Blue Shield of California Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and Bob Woodruff Foundation hosted the event in conjunction with the White House Joining Forces initiative.

Foundation recordkeeping is an inherently dull topic—unless it’s done wrong. The foundation manager who has not kept adequate documentation regarding expenditure responsibility grants will surely find an IRS audit more exciting than he might like. Similarly, a foundation manager confronted with a trustee succession battle will find the situation even more nerve-racking if she cannot put her hands on copies of the minutes of the meeting held years ago at which the succession issue was addressed and resolved.

The Council is aware that an individual healthcare worker, who has since tested positive for Ebola, recently travelled from the Cleveland airport. To date, there are no confirmed cases of Ebola in Ohio.

The Council is closely monitoring the information provided by the Cleveland Department of Health, the Ohio Department of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In an abundance of caution, the Council has reached out to local health officials and conference venues.

The Council on Foundations today announced the release of its 2014 Grantmakers Salary Tables and Board Compensation Tables. Both publications include data collected through the Council’s annual Grantmakers Salary and Benefits survey, and represent two of the most comprehensive sets of data on U.S. foundations’ staff compensation and board compensation practices available.